Inland Northwest connections to Titanic

Improbably, there were a number of people with Spokane-area connections on board the RMS Titanic when it went down on April 15, 1912.

A widow, Margaret Rice, and her five children were returning to their Spokane home from an extended visit in Ireland; a laborer, John Henry Chapman, was returning to Spokane after marrying his childhood sweetheart, Sara Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lawry, in England; a Pomeroy, Wash., man, John Bertram Brady, was traveling in first class when the ship went down; and finally, two people who listed their destination as the same Spokane address but whose connection to each other is unknown – Agda Thorilda Viktoria Lindahl and Johan Svensson Lundahl.

Most of their bodies were never found.

Chapman’s, however, was recovered; his pocket watch stopped when he went into the water at 1:45 a.m. and it’s currently on display in a Titanic exhibit in Falmouth, England, according to Spokesman-Review archives.

A monument at Fairmount Memorial Gardens, where Chapman worked as a gravedigger, commemorates the Inland Northwest Titanic connections.